Comedian Michael Finney makes a living by keeping audiences in stitches, but he's also got a serious side, especially when it comes to his appreciation of the United States military.

Patrick Dove/Standard-Times
A B-17G Flying Fortress, owned and operated by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force, sits on the tarmac at Mathis Field Monday morning as local citizens tour the aircraft. The bomber went into service near the end of World War II in the Pacific Theater but was mainly used to take photographs of allied-captured islands.
shot/archived 10.08.12

The likeness of Betty Grable graces the nose of the Sentimental Journey, a B-17G World War II-era bomber on display at Mathis Field in San Angelo. The bomber is owned and operated by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A World War II bomber attracts a mixed crowd of people. At Mathis Field on Monday, children bought souvenirs from the Commemorative Air Force mobile merchandise vendor while an 85-year-old woman gently brushed with her hand one of the Hamilton Standard props of the B-17G standing nearby.

She had been in her 20s when the warbird was built.

Michael Foris stood by the towering tail of the bomber, recalling conversations he had with his father, who had been a turret gunner on B-17s during the war.

"He was great to watch war movies with. He thought the world of this aircraft."

He went on to a career in the Air Force, later flying on B-29 crews, Foris said.

About 20 people, including Foris, an Albuquerque resident visiting friends in San Angelo, were on hand to welcome Sentimental Journey, a restored B-17G that could be heard nearly before it was visible as it approached San Angelo regional airport, flying over the Skyline Aviation hangar to allow spectators to get a photo before landing.

Although most of the crowd was there to look at and to touch the iconic flying machine, a few were there as passengers.

The B-17 was the industrial era pinnacle of warmaking during the struggle against Adolf Hitler in Europe, and riding in it is not the same experience as flying in a commercial airliner.

Climbing into the tail section through a door designed seemingly to admit no one bigger that a 7-year-old child, the passenger sees a stark interior resembling a culvert. Even a short man cannot stand erect in here. Seats — four of them — are webbed belts stretched across aluminum tubing attached to the curved framework. Daylight is visible around the door after it is closed.

Passengers are warned not to grab hold of the naked cables running the full length of the fuselage — they are the connections between the pilot and the tail control surfaces.

Flying in Sentimental Journey is a loud, airy and claustrophobic experience. The four radial engines sound as though the last mechanic to work on them had left a handful of loose nuts and bolts inside. The runway surface can be seen through cracks around the ball turret in the belly. When pilot Russ Gilmore finishes the run-up and swings the big plane around, the air fills with a throaty roar and the smell of exhaust. The engines snort and bay, and the body of the aircraft flexes and rattles as it leaves the ground, and wind surges loudly through all the openings in the fuselage. Courtesy of aluminum, human ingenuity and 10,000 rivets, the crew and passengers leave the ground behind.

The B-17 is divided distinctly into forward and tail sections by the bomb bay, a floor-to-ceiling cavity in the center of the ship where the payload used to ride on its way from England to Germany, or in some cases from North Africa to Italy. Sentimental Journey's dark bomb bay holds a few dun-colored dummy bombs to give riders the idea. Wind shrieks in around the edges of the bomb bay doors.

Looking backward, a dark and sinister tunnel leads to a patch of daylight at the far end of the fuselage, the lonely outpost of the tail gunner.

"We don't let passengers go back there, not there or in the ball turret," said Troy Smith, the loadmaster for this excursion. "We leave those places as memorials. We've had veterans come on board who want to leave items there in memory."

In the center of the fuselage, behind the bomb bay, is a small desk where the radio operator sat, complete with a key for sending Morse code and other signals. The area is illuminated by daylight streaming down from a plexiglass panel in the ceiling, held in place by four red-painted latches. On a cross member above is stenciled the legend, "Remove upper hatch for defensive fire only," and forward of the hatch is a .50-caliber machine gun ready to slide into position in the desperate eventuality that the hatch would need to be jettisoned to allow the gun to be fired at an attacking enemy aircraft.

Light comes into the center of the fuselage through plexiglass openings on either side where the waist gunners kept watch. Passengers slide past one another, exploring the confinement of the tube and wobbling as the plane bounces in the air, roaring over San Angelo at 1,000 feet and 200 miles per hour.

The noise is deafening, and the sensation of flight exhilarating. The bones of the airplane are visible from one end to the other. Outside, from the air, San Angelo looks surprisingly green.

Back on the ground, Gilmore — a Boeing 757 pilot for US Airways in his other life — stands in front the now-quiet bomber. "I think about the vets and the heroes who flew these in the war," he says. "It's an honor to be doing this. It's really all about education — we've had school kids come and see it, and they were captivated, it's something real from history for them."

Co-pilot Chris Schaich, who also is a pilot for Southwest Airlines, became a B-17 pilot because he wanted to give his skills to a good cause.

"I wanted to do something more with my flying," he says. "This has meaning; it's rewarding."

The Commemorative Air Force spent hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring Sentimental Journey, one of the last of its kind built and one of only five left in full operating condition.

Flown by volunteer pilots and maintained by volunteer mechanics and engineers, it has become a flying ambassador of history, keeping the memories of those who flew in the war — most of them barely out of high school when they faced terror in the skies — alive.

Flights for the ship now barely go above 1,000 feet and bring joy to the passengers. In the war, Gilmore pointed out, the bomb-laden craft flew sometimes at 30,000 feet, with no cabin pressurization or heat, heights where the air temperature fell to minus-15 degrees.